Article of wicker ware and method of making the same



H. F. SHAW A ril 29, 1924.

ARTICLE OF WIGKER WARE AND METHOD OF MAKING THE SAME Filed April 4, 1921 3 Sheets-Sheet 1 awcam/iaw: awaidlwfihaw,

April 29 1924. 1,492,538

H7F.SHAW

ARTICLE OF WICKER WARE AND METHOD OF MAKING THE SAME Filed April 4 1921 3 Sheets- Sheet 2 Ifivenibw Hal/raid -E'Shaw,

April 29, 1924.,

H. F. SHAW ARTICLE OF WICKER WARE AND METHOD OF MAKING THE SAME Filed Anril 4.

1921 3 Sheets-Sheet 3 Patented Apr. 259, 1924.

" 'r'ra PATENT ree.

HAROLD r. SHAW, or LEGMINSTER, mnssacnusn'rrs, assrenor. To r. a. WHITNEY CARRIAGE COMPANY, OF MASSACHUSETTS.

LEOIVIINSTEB, MASSACHUSETTfi, A CORPORATION OF ARTICLE OF WICKER WARE AND METHOD OF MAKING THE SAIEEE.

Application filed April 4-, 1921. Serial No. 458,293.

To all whom it may concern:

Be it known that I, HAROLD F. SHAW, a citizen of the United States, and a resident of Leominster, county of Worcester, and State of Massachusetts, have invented an Improvment in Articles of Wicker Ware and Methods of Making the Same, of which the following description, in connection with the accompanying drawings, is a specification, like characters onthe drawings representing like parts.

This invention relates to basketry and more particularly to the expeditious construction of articles woven from such materials as have a certain stiffness as distinguished from freely flexible materials such as used in the ordinary textile fabrics. Examples are so-called reed or the woody part of the rattan, cane, willow or osiers and the like, all commonly associated with basketry, and substitutes therefor, such, for example, as paper reed. All these materials when woven possess a certain stiffness and form what may be called a stake and strand fabric-as distinguished from the warp and weft fabric of the ordinary textiles. For convenience I shall refer to such fabrics as wicker fabrics, using that word in a some what extended sense to include the various kinds of material referred to.

My invention may best be understood by reference to the following description takenin connection with the accompanying drawings wherein, as an example of my invention, I have shown steps in the production of a hood for a baby carriage although 1t will be understood that the invention is of a generic character adapted for use in the production of articles of varying'utility and widely difierent forms.

In the drawings:

Fig. 1 is a plan view of a wicker fabric;

Fig. 2 shows the first step in the preparation of such fabric for the purpose of forming the hood of a baby carriage;

Fig. 3 is a side elevation of such a hood when completed;

Fig. 4 is an enlarged view of a portion of the wrong side of the fabric showing a step intermediate Fig. 2 and Fig. 3;

Fig. 5 is a perspective View of the shaped fabric before it isattached to the frame of the hood; and

Fig. 6 is a perspective view of the completed hood. 1

My invention is applicable to shaping a uniform wicker fabric which may be expeditiously made, if desired by machine, into articles of varying form and as an example I have herein chosen the hood of a baby carriage bent or curved in two directions. Thus, referring to Fig. 6, the hood as a whole is curved from the front end to the back end and also transversely bowed and has tapered or kite shaped sides. My invention provides for producing a shaped article of this nature from a uniform piece of wicker fabric, the complete article having a pleas- ,ing appearance without suggestion of patching or adaptation and, in particular, provision is made for reproducing closely the appearance of articles shaped during the weaving process in a manner possible only by skilled hand labor Referring to Fig. 1, I there show a wicker fabric woven uniformly as a flat sheet from any of the materials commonly used for such purpose and comprising the stakes s corresponding to the warp of a textile fabric and the filler strands f corresponding to the weft. The fabric may be expeditiously produced by a suitable machine as a needle loom and in this instance the stakes 8 may desirably be of fiber reed and the filler strands either of the same material or of genuine reed or cane.

Let us suppose we wish to construct the baby carriage hood as shown in Fig. 6 by covering with a wicker fabric aframe comprising bows 7 radiating from the bow-irons 9 and connected by curved braces 11, one of which is shown in Fig. 6 and for definiteness let us suppose that the stakes are to extend from front to back between the bows 7 and the strands from side to side between the bow irons 9. For this purpose the width of the fabric measured along the filler strands f, viewing Fig. 1, is taken equal to the width of the hood measured from bow iron to bow lron and across the top and a length of this fabric measured along the top of the hood and could be fitted thereto over the braces 11, the flexibility of the stakes .9 along the central portion permitting the fabric to be adapted to the fore and aft curvature of the hood. My invention more particularly relates to the manner in which provision is made for overcoming the stiffening in the other direction whlch would result from this arching of the fabric and permitting the shaping of the fabric as a whole to the transverse curvature of the hood and in particular the fitting of the same to the kite shaped side portions in an attractive manner imitating hand work.

Referring to Fig. 2, the corners of the fabric may be cut away diagonally as indicated at 13, the uncut portion of the straight edge 15 conveniently being of a length substantially equal to that of the bows 7 of the hood, Fig. 6, between the braces 11. Along the margins of the blank the filler strands f are cut away to form wedge shaped darts 17 so that the margin of the blank as a whole has a serrated appearance. These darts are not cut out bodily from the fabric but only the filler strands f are severed along a line oblique to their general direction and pulled out, the stakes 8 extending uninterrupted acros the darts 17 as indicated in Fig. 2. Herein I have shown two such darts 17 providing with the truncated edges 13 three wedge shaped tongues 19, 21 and 23, the combined area of these tongues being substantially equal to the area of the sides of the completed hood.

The darts 17 are then closed by laterally displacing the filler strands in the tongues 19 and 23 along the stakes to fill the darts and the ends of the stakes thus left projecting at the sides are turned over or trimmed off as desired. Referring to Fig. i, I have shown a single strand 25 so displaced from the section 19 and have shown this separately to indicate how the end of this strand, paralleling the cut ends of the filler strands along the diagonal side of the dart 17, may serve to catch and position the ends of these strands and hold them interlocked with the stakes s. The filler strands f and the three tongues, 19, 21 and 23 being drawn together along the stakes 5, they assume, as indicated in Figs. 3 and 5, a wedge shaped form corresponding to the shape of the side of the hood and in so doing the whole fabric is bowed transversely as indicated in Fig. 5 substantially to the form of the hood, this being due to the fact that the ends of the strands 29 and 31 in the tongues 19 and 21 respectively (see Figs. 2 and 3) are brought substantially to a center defined by the bow iron 9 and since the portions of these strands in the tongues are of the same length and firmly locked in the fabric by their interweaving with the stakes 8 they tend to assume the position of radii and so draw the whole side of the fabric into sector form,the arc of this sector being the curve of the top of the hood. The fabric cannot remain flat as, if it did, the distance from bow iron to bow iron measured along the straight line along strand 31 would equal the distance along the broken line measured along strand 29. The fabric, therefore, in the given case assumes substantially the form of a cylindrical sector (usually somewhat flared as indicated in Fig. 5 by the elastic stiffness of the material), each distance then being the sum of an altitude and two radii of the cylinder. The shaped fabric thus formed may be attached to the frame of the hood without further deformation and without the necessity of any clamping or stretching and trimmed in any desired manner to form the completed article as shown in Fig. 6.

Referring to Fig. 3 it will be seen that in the hood as viewed from the side the filler strands extend in a generally converging direction toward the bow irons 9 of the hood and thus reproduce closely the appearance of a hand woven hood in which the stakes are gradually formed to the curvature of the hood while interwoven with a filler strand which is turned backward and forward and interwoven with a variable number of the stakes as is necessary to form and shape the fabric. In the article here disclosed, on the contrary, the filler strands are separate, adjacent strands extending side by side throughout their length. Their length in the completed article, for instance in the section 21, varies progressively and they terminate at progressively varying distances from the ends of the hood defined at the bow irons 9 and define with the filler strand 25 of the adjacent tongue 19 a line of junction which extends substantially parallel to the shortest strand 27 and then along the oblique line defined by the cut off ends of the strands in the tongue 21. The stakes 8,

however, extend unbroken across this line of junction since they were not cut when the filler strands were removed to form the dart-s 17 and the fabric as a whole, therefore, has the appearance of a complete fabric. Furthermore, on account of the yielding stiffness of the stakes s and the positioning of the same in the fabric, they do not in the finished article have a broken and discontinuous appearance but are bowed to the are of a continuous circle as indicated in Fig. 3 just as the stakes are bent when a fabric is shaped to form in hand weaving.

I have described in detail a baby carriage hood constructed in accordance with my invention as that article serves as an excellent illustration of the possibilities of the novel method since the. baby carriage hood has a double curvature and varies in superficial area. It will be understood, however, that by proper design of the initial blank and of the shape and position of the darts, which word I use in a somewhat generalized sense without connotation of a definite shape or location, articles or portions of articles of widely varying forms and for widely varying purposes may be expeditiously constructed. I also refer specifically herein to stakes and strands. Vhile in the ordinary wicker article it. will usually be preferable to cut away the relatively closely spaced filler strands rather than the stakes the opposite procedure is possible and the words are used herein for the purpose of discrimination in the description and not as parts of the definition of the scope of the invention. With these considerations in mind the principles exemplified by the above described specific embodiment of my invention which I claim as new and desire to secure by Letters Patent I shall express in the following claims.

Claims:

1. A method of forming articles of wicker ware comprising providing a woven wicker fabric, removing the filler strands of a wedge shaped area and displacing into said area and along the stakes the adjacent filler strands.

2. A method of forming articles of Wicker ware comprising providing a woven wicker fabric, forming a dart in the edge thereof by removal solely of the filler strands and closing said dart by lateral displacement of the adjacent filler strands along the stakes.

3. A method of forming wicker ware articles from a uniform wicker fabric comprising cutting away the filler strands in an area having a bounding line oblique thereto and drawing up the strands on thestakes.

4. A method of forming articles of wicker ware comprising providing a fabric including stakes and filler strands, said strands interwoven with said stakes to define a serrated boundary and drawing the serrations together along the stakes.

5. A method of shaping articles from wicker comprising providing a woven wickor fabric having discontinuities in one set of crossing elements and closing the discontinuities by displacement of elements of said set along the elements of the other set.

6. A method of forming articles of wicker ware comprising providing a woven wicker fabric, removing the filler strands in a limited area thereof and displacing adjacent filler strands along the stakes into said area.

7. A methodof forming articles of wicker ware comprising shaping a woven wicker fabric by removal of a portion of the filler strands to provide an open space, displacing adjacent filler strands along the stakes into said space and attaching the shaped fabric to a frame.

8. A wicker article having stakes extending across the same and separate closely arranged filler strands and comprising a tapering section formed of separate filler strands of progressively varying length and another section comprising other filler strands converging toward the tapered section providing a narrowing of the body of interwoven stakes and strands to give the article a tapered portion.

9. In a wicker article a series of stakes, separate filler strands of varying length interwoven therewith and defining at their ends an oblique line inward of the margins of the article beyond which line the stakes extend and other filler strands completing the woven structure including one extending substantially parallel to the shortest of said filler strands first mentioned for the length of the same and then to said line and serving to lock said ends to the stakes.

10. A wicker article formed of interwoven strands, one set of strands being provided with darts and the other set extending unbroken across said darts, the strands of the first set being set close together along thos of the second to close the darts.

11. A blank for use in forming a wicker ware article comprising stakes and interwoven filler strands defining an open space in the fabric, said space being crossed by the stakes, a portion of said filler strands being free to be shifted along the stakes into said space.

12. A blank for use in forming a wicker ware article comprising-stakes and interwoven filler strands forming projecting tongues along an edge of the fabric separated by spaces, the stakes extending across the spaces and into the tongues, the filler strands of a tongue being free to be shifted along the stakes into the adjacent space.

13. A blank for use in forming a wicker ware article comprising stakes and interwoven filler strands including a set of filler strands having cut ends defining an open space in the fabric, said space being crossed by the stakes, said set of filler strands being free to be shifted laterally lengthwise of the stakes into said space.

14. A blank for use in forming a wicker ware article comprising stakes and interwoven filler strands having cut ends defining an open space in the fabric having an oblique boundary, which space is crossed by the stakes whereby the longer strands may be shifted laterally and lengthwise of the stakes across a space to close the same in the completed article and to lap the ends of adjacent strands of progressively varying length.

In testimony whereof, I have signed my name to this specification.

HAROLD F. SHAW. 

